This is a family friendly blog for those who love dolls and toys. The blog is a forum for all apsects of doll history, doll collecting, and doll making. It is the first step in creating a nonprofit doll center to educate the public about the historical role that dolls, the oldest human cultural artifact, play in the the lives of people all over the world. All excerpts are the author's intellectual property and may not be reproduced in any means withoutreceiving permission from the author.

My husband led me to a fantastic Victorian doll house yesterday. After we chatted with a great couple who built it, we came home with VanV...

Sand Baby Castaways

Courtesy, Glenda Rolle the Artist

PM Dolls

Leo Moss

German Dolls

Formerly, Aunt Len's.

Beecher Doll

Graces cover of Lenon Hoyte Auction, Aunt Len's

Foreign Dolls

Pryor Collection

Pryor Doll Collection

In Dec. 1959 Natl. Geographic

Great Book

Edward VI's Doll, 1540

Formerly, Helen Moe Doll Museum

Rare "frozen metal doll" Mannikin Pis

Courtesy, eBay Eilleen, Finder 27

Vintage Japanese Doll Joins our Museum Family

Courtesy, Southern Soldier Antiques

Rare Frozen Charlotte Type

A Pageant of Dolls

By Lesley Gordon, 1948

Hong Kong Lili

Barbie Stamp

An early Vintage Barbie

Bild Lili

Zinc Bodied Rohmer

Caused a suit between Mme. Rohmer and Mlle. Huret

Metal Dydee Baby

17th century Lead Dolls

England

Doll Shaped Mold

cf Dolls and Puppets by von Boehn

Metal Head

Probably Minerva

Black Metal Head

Russian Nesting Doll Charm

18 inch Metal Head

Mlle Bleuette

14th C Munich Clay Doll

Used as Bapitsmal Gifts

Halopeau artists rendering

Toy maker

Restored dolls

L to R: All vinyl mid-60s, Ragggedy Ann, handmade, new arms and clothes, Barbie Type as Elizabeth Short, The Black Dahlia. Black Felt Dress, white silk flowers and ribbons. She is in one piece, but with a swivel waist that does snap in two!

About Me

Thursday, January 21, 2010

you started to love all kinds of people too, because you saw the virtue

in their expressions, how carefully they had been sculpted, the parts contrived to

create the triumph of this or that remarkable face.

ANNE RICE

TALTOS

Today, I wanted to talk about the definition of "doll," as well as what has inspired me to create a museum collection. A friend of mine always said "Dolls are Where You Find Them!!" Anyone who loves to collect dolls knows that she was right. I have literally searched the world for dolls to add to my collection. Really, any good collector would do the same. For, as Anne Rice implied in the above quote, there are as many kinds of dolls in the world as there are people. There is no end to the materials used to make dolls. And, there are just as many reasons to collect them as there are collectors and dealers. Ideally, the best doll dealers or entrepeneurs are those who also have their own collections and who love dolls. Others gather their doll "families" because they want to recapture some fond but lost childhood memory. Or, maybe someone was too poor to have dolls when s/he was little; after all, toys in general, and dolls in particular, are luxuries. Of course, there are those who collect dolls because they are students of costume or history, or because they want inspiration for some other line of work.

I don't know why I started collecting dolls. I only know that I have been doing it since I was three years old. Actually, I preferred toy guns and playing outside with the other children in the neighborhood to dolls when I was very young. I didn't play "Barbies" until relatively late in life, (ages 10-12), and by then, I was an avid collector. My "play" consisted not in make-believe so much as in redressing dolls and creating little plays for them. I was also involved in battles with little boys who had plastic soldiers. Since girls in my day couldn't fight, however, I was relegated to nurse duty, and had to stand up the little plastic figures after they had fallen down in an enemy attack. At least once, I rescued minuscule revolutionary war soldiers from driveway gravel in which they had been imbedded for I don't know how long. A friend's older brother had carelessly trampled them underfoot, into the gravel, when he tired of them. I was always the rescuer of broken and forgotten dolls, so that doll restoration became an important reason for me to keep collecting.

Whatever the reason anyone has for doll collecting, however, one has to acknowledge that it is now one of the fastest growing hobbies in the United States, if not the world. Some say that it is the leading hobby in this country. I almost wish it weren't. Dolls should not be a source of competition; they are items of comfort and mystery, and important icons of childhood. Their very presence is testament to the similarities among people throughout the ages; no matter when we were born, all people have had the desire to recreate themselves for posterity. Human motives for doll creating are not important; ritual figures, religious idols, miniature portraits, toy soldiers, statues, toys, grave dolls, paper dolls, models, all serve a particular purpose. Like paintings and photographs they have the potential to live after us, and they have the potential to imitate us. They fascinate us for these very reasons and more. And, the way the word "doll" is defined also describes the type of collector.

Let's define a doll for our purposes as any representation of the human figure, big or small, whether or not a child's plaything. This way, we can have interesting discussions of statues and figurines, and automatons, and robots, and many other wonderful doll-like objects that are left out of most books. And, let's also include anthropomorphized creatures like teddy bears and "Beanie Babies," often dressed and treated as dolls anyway. We may even have a discussion or two about other objects that have been turned into dolls. For example, Cosette in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables adopts an old footstool as her "doll." Laura Ingalls Wilder's first doll in Little House in the Big Woods was simply a corncob wrapped in an old handkerchief and called Susan. Let's also consider what Barton Wright and Evelyn Roat say in their book, This is a Hopi Kachina. The authors write that " the kachina doll is not a toy, but it is not considered wrong for a child to play with it" (19). One could make the same observation about almost any object, especially one representing a human being. Perhaps it is no accident that many of the famous porcelain companies of the world allegedly made small dolls and doll heads as part of their trade that closely resembled the heads of the figurines they made. For others, dolls were ritual objects, representations of lost loved ones, childhood friends, or inspirational muses. Defining the word and the parameters of a collection are personal choices, reflected in indivdual taste and preference.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Welcome to my museum blog. This blog is about the process of creating a doll museum, first in web form, then as a brick-and-mortar attraction. I have collected, made, written about dolls and doll-related items since I was three years-old. The pieces in my collection range from ancient ritual figures to modern robotic toys. They include fashion dolls, Santos, collectors dolls antiques, folk dolls, craft dolls, paper dolls, figurines, toy soldiers, sculptures, photographs, books, related memorabilia, and letters from others known in the world of dolls and antiques My collection is one of the most unique in the world. It is also one of the largest private collections. I have reached the point where I would like to share it with others. I will be posting photographs of some of the items in the collection. I am not a dealer; I am not interested in commercial gain and am in the process of forming a nonprofit corporation on behalf of the museum. I am interested in hearing from others who enjoy writing about the history of dolls and toys and who enjoy collecting them for their own sake.